Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: This article explores care workers and working carers' experiences of work. It focuses on how both groups of workers experience pressures to adhere to an ideal, which this article argues, is centered on an emotional reaction of guilt. Through this ideal of a guilty worker, a “care ethic” is reconfigured to become a “work ethic.” Drawing on 120 semistructured interviews with care workers, working carers, trade union officers, and care company managers, the article examines how guilt is experienced and constructed in the workplace, and how it becomes beneficial to the aims of the employing organization. The article links the construction and instrumentalization of guilt to Acker's analysis of the ideal worker and to the problematic discourse of the “heroism” of key workers during the Covid‐19 pandemic. This discourse can reinforce the image of a sacrificial ideal worker; it implies that if workers do not take a sacrificial approach as part of their work and care ethics, they should feel guilty.
Source: Gender Work and Organization
DOI: 10.1111/gwao.12956
Authors: Camille Allard, Grace J. Whitfield
Institutions: University of Birmingham, University of Sheffield
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $4,430
Award: G4971884770
OpenAlex ID: W4313680971